In Hell, in Brazil: Baudelairean fabric in Cruz e Sousa

Abstract

Through the reading of the prose poem “No inferno” [“In Hell”], published in Evocações (1898), this article aims to present some aspects of the reception of Charles Baudelaire’s literature and its fundamental role in Cruz e Sousa’s poetic creation. The argument highlights the Brazilian poet’s incorporation of motifs, themes, processes and genres through a particular interpretation of Baudelaire’s poetry, without prejudice to its profound connection to the reception of the author of Les Fleurs du Mal (1857) in its original context, in French decadent and symbolist literature. In addition, the article revisits issues related to the reception of Sousa’s poetry at that time, as well as its direct opposition to the dominant discourse, which was largely imbued with narrow nationalism, positivism and contemporary racial theories. In this sense, he may be called a foreign body in Brazilian literature, if not in the very constellation of fin-de-siècle poets, which grants special interest in it as a particular moment in the formation of modern poetry.